Leading the camp will be Penn State’s Chad Hanna, assistant professor of physics. Earlier this year, Hanna made headlines for his role in the first-ever detection of gravitational waves — minute ripples in the fabric of space-time. With the finding of these waves, Hanna was finally able to confirm the last part of Albert Einstein’s general theory of relativity.

Now, students interested in science will have an opportunity to learn more about this major astrophysical breakthrough. The camp participants will assemble their own high-throughput computing cluster, similar to the ones used by Hanna and his colleagues to analyze the reams of data generated by LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory).

The campers will also receive a tour of the Tower Road Data Center, a newly constructed facility that will house Penn State's high-performance research cloud, ICS's Advanced Cyber Infrastructure (ICS-ACI).

Hanna hopes this camp will inspire the participants to follow their scientific passions.

"It's exciting to give the students this opportunity," said Hanna. "How many people can say that they helped build a supercomputer at summer camp? They will get to do real science and see how cool it is. It should be a unique experience for them."

The camp is being organized through Eberly’s Science-U program, which helps Penn State researchers provide outreach to the local community. The students will use Dell laptops on loan from IST during the camp.